Phasmophobia
by chocolatequeen
Summary: On a visit back to London, the Doctor and Rose discover that Earth has been visited by ghosts, and everything they've been running from for four months hits them at once. Part 11 of As Time Goes By.


This is part 11 of my series "As Time Goes By," which you can find listed on my profile page. Up until the previous story, this series followed what I think is a good guess at the progression of their relationship in canon. We've now gone solidly off-canon, leading to a Doomsday fixit. But first we have to get through Army of Ghosts and all the ominous undertones of that episode.

14: last kiss

In his workroom, the Doctor went over all the things they'd learned since landing in London as he worked feverishly to create a device that would help him locate the ghosts' point of origin.

 _Ghosts._ He tried to sneer at the idea, but the unpredictability of the timelines around this event had him on the edge of panic. This was the storm he and Rose had sensed a month ago; he was sure of it. Despite his confidence then, now that they were in the middle of it, he couldn't tell how it would turn out.

He looked down at the device in his hands. It still needed… Ah! He spun around and ran for the console room, where he pulled up a section of the grating and jumped down below the console.

The tech work was a welcome relief from all the other thoughts in his mind. As long as he was building his ghost hunter—ghost buster?—he could avoid the questions swirling around in his mind. Why did they come to London today, and not two months ago when he could have stopped this?

The Doctor paused and stared up at the console. "Better yet," he muttered at his ship, "why didn't any of Rose's phone calls to Jackie connect during that two month period? Or either of the visits we've made in the last month?"

The TARDIS' answering hum was vague, and the Doctor scowled at her. If he'd known weeks ago about the ghosts, things wouldn't be so bad. The idea that things had to happen like this frankly terrified him, and he refused to consider it. This wasn't a fixed point—he knew that much.

He heard the TARDIS doors open as he slid the last piece into place. "According to the paper," Rose called out, "they've elected a ghost as MP for Leeds. Now don't tell me you're going to sit back and do nothing."

The Doctor scoffed; of course he wasn't sitting back and doing nothing. He slid the straps of his device over his shoulders and jumped up where she could see him.

"Who you going to call?" he sang.

Rose laughed, and the carefree sound calmed some of the fear in the Doctor's hearts. "Ghostbusters!" she chanted.

The Doctor mugged a pose for her. "I ain't afraid of no ghosts."

To his chagrin, she tilted her head and looked at him carefully, the way she always did when she saw through his exterior demeanour. "Doctor… how bad is this?" she said quietly.

He sighed and took the paper from her, setting it down on the jump seat. "What do you see?" he asked, wondering if her unique time sense would offer her more insight than his had.

A furrow appeared between her brows, and her eyes closed as she tried to focus on the timelines. A moment later, her eyes flew open, panic blazing in them.

"A storm, and a battle," she said, her voice higher than normal. "Doctor, the Beast—he said I was going to die in battle."

"And I told you he lied," the Doctor countered, but he couldn't help the slight wobble in his voice. This was everything they'd been running from for four months, all coming at them at once.

"Promise me," Rose demanded, grabbing his arms.

The Doctor opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and pulled her close. Rose's breathing was unsteady as she buried her face in the crook of his neck, but he didn't feel any tears fall. He dropped a kiss on top of her head and tried—again—to voice the words, but if he was going to lose her today, he couldn't bear it if he'd just told her he loved her.

oOoOoOoOo

Rose stood beside her mother on a grassy patch in the playground, watching the Doctor race around setting up three metal cones and linking them together with wires.

"When's the next shift?" he asked as he set the first one carefully in place, then moved on to the next.

"Quarter to," Jackie said. "But don't go causing trouble. What's that lot do?"

"Triangulates their point of origin," he said as he plugged the wire into the base of one of the cones.

Rose tapped her fingers against her jaw, trying to think of some answer to the situation that didn't indicate a catastrophe. "I don't suppose it's the Gelth?"

"Nah." The Doctor set the cone down and jogged over to the last one. "They were just coming through one little rift. This lot are transposing themselves over the whole planet. Like tracing paper."

"You're always doing this," her mum protested. "Reducing it to science. Why can't it be real? Just think of it, though. All the people we've lost. Our families coming back home. Don't you think it's beautiful?"

The Doctor straightened up and blinked at her. "I think it's horrific," he said bluntly. "Rose, give us a hand," he requested, unspooling thick wire as he backed up into the TARDIS.

Rose bit back a sigh, but he hadn't given her time to chastise him, and frankly, she agreed. She shot her mother an apologetic smile as she ran with him into the TARDIS.

The Doctor knew his words were harsh, but the entire concept of ghosts springing up on planet Earth made him shudder. The dead were meant to stay dead.

He plugged the end of the wire into the console, and an image popped up on the monitor. Jackie followed them inside and shut the door behind her, but he ignored his mother-in-law in favour of giving Rose a series of quick instructions.

"As soon as the cones activate, if that line goes into the red, press that button there." He pointed at the console, then reached into his coat pocket as he kept talking. "If it doesn't stop, setting fifteen B," he told her, handing the sonic screwdriver over. "Hold it against the port, eight seconds and stop."

"Fifteen B, eight seconds," Rose repeated, taking the sonic from him.

The Doctor nodded quickly, then pointed at the monitor again. "If it goes into the blue, activate the deep scan on the left."

"Hang on a minute, I know." Rose stretched, balancing on her left leg as her right rose off the floor. "Push that one."

The Doctor looked where she was pointing and shrugged. "Close."

She nodded and moved her hand. "That one?"

He winced. "Now you've just killed us."

Rose chuckled and tried once more. "Er, that one."

"Yeah! Now, what've we got?" he asked Jackie. "Two minutes to go?"

She looked at her watch and nodded.

He sighed, wishing he'd timed that just a little bit better. Not that he wanted to be racing outside with barely any time left, but even two minutes was too long to stand still when he could feel the storm building around them.

Rose grabbed his hand and squeezed twice, and in return, he brushed his thumb over her pulse point. She smiled at him, and he managed to grin back before running outside with thirty seconds to spare before the ghost shift started.

When the Doctor dropped her hand and ran back outside, Rose took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on doing what he'd asked. She couldn't fall apart now, even though she kept seeing images of the battle ahead of them.

The cones activated, drawing her attention back to the present. Almost immediately, the line went into the red. Rose pressed the button the Doctor had shown her, with no effect. She fumbled pulling the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket, but a moment later, she held it against the port, and breathed a sigh of relief when the line moved out of the red.

"What's the line doing?" the Doctor called out.

She shoved the sonic screwdriver back into her pocket. "It's all right. It's holding!"

"Is this your life now?" her mum asked. "You and him, doing crazy things like this?"

Rose glanced up at her, then focused on the screen again, only watching her mother from her peripheral vision. "Mum, this has been my life for two years."

Jackie crossed her arms over her chest and set her jaw. "It's been different lately though," she insisted. "Before… even up until Christmas, you were more like a…"

"An assistant," Rose suggested, remembering what Sarah Jane had called her.

"Yeah!" Her mum nodded vigorously. "You helped him out with things, but he was still running the show. And now, it's like you're partners. It's been like that for a while—I noticed it when you came to help me with Elton."

"Isn't that better?" Rose countered. She looked out the TARDIS door, wishing the Doctor would do something to distract her mum for a while.

Jackie snorted. "Well, it's gonna make it hard for you to ever fit back in here on Earth," she pointed out. "I mean… what's going to happen if you ever decide you're done travelling?"

Rose sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "That's not gonna happen, Mum," she said. "I thought you understood that me and the Doctor…"

Her voice trailed off. This was really not the way she wanted to tell her mother that she'd essentially eloped.

After a brief pause, Jackie said, "You and the Doctor what? I know you're together now, but is that gonna last forever? Is himself ever going to marry you and give you some real security?"

Rose turned a dial on the console—just the volume for the radio, but it gave her something to do to look busy and ignore her mother. If she looked up now, there was no way her mum wouldn't know she was keeping something from her.

"Here we go!" the Doctor shouted.

Rose breathed a sigh of relief and checked the scanner. "The scanner's working," she called out. "It says delta one six."

"Don't think you can just ignore my question forever, Rose," her mum warned. "I'm not letting you throw your life away on an alien who won't even make a commitment to you."

Rose felt her eyebrows furrow together tight enough to make her head hurt. "Mum," she bit out, "this really isn't the time for this conversation. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kind of in the middle of something."

"Oh, I've noticed. But as near as I can tell, you're always in the middle of something. We'll get this sorted today, Rose."

Outside, the Doctor let out a shout of laughter before running into the TARDIS. "I said so!" he said as he tossed his coat over a strut. "Those ghosts have been forced into existence from one specific point, and I can track down the source."

He spun around the console, and Rose realised a moment too late what he was about to do.

"Allons-y!" he said, pulling the lever and sending the TARDIS to the coordinates she'd picked up from his experiment.

The Doctor laughed again as the TARDIS took flight, spinning through space and time towards a destination he heartily wished they could avoid. The closer they got to the heart of this mystery, the louder the dread clamoured in the back of his mind.

To drown it out, he started chattering as they were in flight. "I like that. Allons-y." He moved around the console, adjusting the dials slightly to give them a smoother, more accurate flight. "I should say allons-y more often. Allons-y. Watch out, Rose Tyler. Allons-y. And then, it would be really brilliant if I met someone called Alonso, because then I could say, allons-y, Alonso, every time."

He met Rose on the other side of the console, but she wasn't smiling at his babbling the way she normally did. "You're staring at me."

"My mum's still on board," she murmured.

The Doctor's gaze swung over to an angry Jackie Tyler, sitting on one of the outer railings, and he gulped—hard.

"If we end up on Mars, I'm going to kill you," she wanted, brandishing her fist.

The TARDIS landed with a distinct thud before he could answer Jackie's threat, and he pulled the scanner around so he could avoid talking to his mother-in-law. They were in some kind of warehouse… surrounded by soldiers carrying guns.

The Doctor tugged on his ear. "Oh well there goes the advantage of surprise," he muttered. "Still, cuts to the chase." He looked at Rose, then glanced at Jackie. "Stay in here; look after Jackie."

"I'm not looking after my mum," she protested, her voice hot with anger.

The Doctor bit back a resigned sigh. Not for the first time, he wished he'd been brave enough to bond with her in the last month. It would be so much easier if he could explain why he needed her to stay behind without actually talking.

He tilted his head and looked at her contemplatively before reaching out and running his hand through her hair, letting his fingers linger over her temple. Her eyes widened and she nodded, and he leaned forward to kiss her as he pressed his fingers firmly to her temple, opening a telepathic connection with her.

 _What is it, Doctor?_ Rose asked.

Her fingers combed through his hair, skating over his temple, and he shuddered as a frisson of desire ran through him.

 _Just… just me is enough this time, love,_ he told her, and her hand settled safely at the base of his neck. _Thank you._

He ran his free hand down her back and pulled her close. _I need you to stay on the TARDIS so you're available to attempt a rescue if I'm taken,_ he explained. _They obviously were expecting us, but maybe if I walk out alone…_

Rose sighed and adjusted the angle of their kiss so she could suck his bottom lip into her mouth. _Fine. I don't like it, but fine._ She nipped lightly at his lip, and the Doctor groaned into her mouth and pulled her closer.

"OI!"

The loud exclamation caught their attention, and the Doctor eased out of Rose's mind as their lips parted. He looked over his shoulder at Jackie Tyler, her arms now crossed over her chest.

"Do you mind?" he asked.

"Yeah, I bloody well did mind watching you snog my daughter right in front of me," she shot back. "Seems you've forgotten the rules, mate."

"Oh, for…" Rose stepped around the Doctor and glared at her mum, her fists planted firmly on her hips. "No one's forgotten about your bleeding rules," she snapped. "Not like we could, the way you remind us about them every time we visit. But maybe _you've_ forgotten that we're not in your house—we're in _our_ home. And in this home, me and the Doctor can kiss as much and as long as we want."

The Doctor cleared his throat and shifted towards the door. "I'd… ah, I'd better get out there before they try to come in," he stammered. "Not that they could. The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door. But they might try, and I don't like to think what they'd do in the process. So. Yes. Going out there now."

Rose glanced at the scanner as he strode towards the door, and she suddenly registered the risk he was taking. She was just barely able to reach the door before him, stretching her arms across it go he couldn't get out.

"Doctor, they've got guns."

"And I haven't. Which makes me the better person, don't you think? They can shoot me dead, but the moral high ground is mine."

Rose could feel her hands shaking as the Doctor put his hands on her hips to move her out of the way. She grabbed onto the lapels of his jacket and tried to beg him to stay, but her mouth was too dry to talk.

Comprehension flickered in his eyes and he pulled her close, wrapping one arm around her waist while he cradled her head gently in the other hand and pressed his lips to her temple.

"I'm counting on you, love," he whispered into her hair. "I know you can do it."

Rose turned her head and brushed her lips against the Doctor's. She felt him hesitate for just a moment before returning the kiss, and she clutched at his jacket to hold him in place.

The hand that had been cradling the back of her head moved around and his fingers rested against her temple. Rose gasped when she felt a wave of love rush into her as the Doctor opened a telepathic connection. His tongue swept into her open mouth, and she arched into his embrace.

Without any experience in telepathy, Rose had no idea how to return his gesture, but she needed to tell him somehow. _I wonder…_ She stroked her tongue against his and focused on much she loved him, how he made her feel.

A moment later, he gasped and pulled out of the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. "Rose," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. "How…"

She tilted her head back so she could look the Doctor in the eye. "I love you."

His adam's apple bobbed and he smiled as he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "Quite right, Rose Tyler."

The Doctor pulled her close for a quick hug, and she felt him pluck the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. Then he let her go and walked out the door.

Rose's heart was in her throat as she watched him go. Too many thoughts whirled through her mind to catch a hold of, but one was crystal clear:

 _I hope that wasn't our last kiss._


End file.
